'Beyond imagination': artists of the Kimberley share stories of their country

Australia’s history of slavery and forced labour is largely ignored, but it is integral to the art of Ngarralja Tommy May.

“Being a stockman was a hard job, hot heat, kartiya [white person] and Blackfella bosses, they were rough,” he says in the Desert River Sea catalogue. "You had to work hard for your money, otherwise no bed, no food. Young men fella would be taken and learn you for work."

May was one of many Indigenous men forced into work on the stations of the Kimberley in the remote north of Western Australia.

Garry Sibosado's Aalingoon (Rainbow Serpent) at Kooljaman Beach, part of the Desert River Sea exhibition.Credit:Garry Sibosado

The Kimberley’s stunning landscape often features in tourism advertisements, but the stories of May and his fellow artists at Mangkaja Arts Resource Agency at Fitzroy Crossing are rarely told.

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It is an omission that Carly Lane hopes will be corrected by Desert River Sea: Portraits Of The Kimberley, which opens at the Art Gallery of WA on February 9.

“In Australia we love Aboriginal art but we often don’t love the people behind it,” says Lane, the gallery’s curator of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander art.

May, a senior Walmajarri man and elder, depicted his experiences of station life as well as Dreamtime and ties to country on animal hides for the exhibition.

Fellow artist Mervyn Street shaved and carved into the hair of a cowhide to create a herd of long-horned cattle grazing on the leather in Droving Cattle In The Summertime.

Mervyn Street wearing "Droving Cattle In The Summertime".

Their artworks are among the newly commissioned works in the exhibition, which features works from six art centres scattered across the Kimberley as well as independent artists Daniel Walbidi and brothers Darrell and Garry Sibosado.

An incoming tide on a deserted beach washes away Walbidi’s depiction of a salt lake from his ancestral country in the video work Wirnpa. A sand painting of the lake, which represents the creation spirit Serpent Man and his three sons will also be in the show.

Daniel Walbidi installing "Wirnpa", one of the artworks in the exhibition.

The Sibosado brothers depict the rainbow serpent Aalingoon as a pearl shell sculpture and wall drawings.

Desert River Sea will also feature artworks from the collections of the art centres, the Art Gallery of WA and private collectors such as Janet Holmes a Court. “They will surprise, they’ll delight, they’ll educate, they’ll stimulate, they’ll fascinate,” she says, “and my great hope is that the audience for these works is huge.”

The Desert River Sea exhibition is the culmination of a six-year project instigated by the gallery to engage with the artists and art centres of the Kimberley. It also resulted in an online archive of contemporary art from the region and professional development workshops for Kimberley artists.

Holmes a Court was on a panel that provided $1.8 million in funding over six years for the project from mining giant Rio Tinto - a decision she says was a “no brainer”.

“It seemed to me it was a grand project that was going to embrace so many of the art centres in the Kimberley and give the opportunity for people to work for a long time on a project,” she says.

The duration of the project allowed artists to work in different mediums and develop new skills, Holmes a Court says. “I guess this has given the Indigenous people from these communities the ability to explore new mediums and contemporary ways of sharing the oldest stories on the planet,” she says. “That to me is a vital part of the exhibition.”

She says the variety of works in the exhibition “certainly exceeded” expectations.

“People have strayed way beyond their normal practice,” she says. “There’s video, there’s animation, there are paintings in sand and ochre and acrylic, there’s glasswork, drawings, photography, works on cowhide. There’s carving on pearl shells. The variety of works is really staggering.”

The rugged landscape and monsoonal climate of the Kimberley makes its presence felt in the materials used by artists and the stories they depict.

Holmes a Court, who was appointed chairwoman of the Art Gallery of WA last year, describes the region as “beyond imagination” and some of the most spectacular landscape she has seen. “It’s grand in that the cliffs are high, the rocks are enormous, the gorges will swallow you if you’re not very careful,” she says.

But the Kimberley’s beauty is harsh; its inhabitants forced to survive in what Holmes a Court calls “some of the toughest country in Australia”.

The region provokes a similar sense of awe in Wendy Martin, the artistic director of the Perth Festival, who describes flying over the Kimberley as “one of life’s truly extraordinary experiences”.

"I’ve read that the old people talk about flying over their country in their dreams,” she says. “When you see the land from above and look at the work of the great Kimberley painters you realise how deeply connected they are with country.”

Like Holmes a Court, she expresses a particular interest in the art of the stockmen depicting station life. “Mervyn Street’s paintings that are so full of energy explore stories about the introduction of cattle stations to the Kimberley - documenting the effects of colonisation on his community.”

Art Gallery of WA director Stefano Carboni says the new works commissioned for the exhibition are "exciting in their own right, demonstrating how lively and innovative all the art centres in the Kimberley strive to be”.

“Perhaps the works that please me most are the colourful slumped glass plates made by several Warlayirti artists from Wirrimanu (Balgo), which are now beautifully installed and lit, flush against the walls of the exhibition,” he says.

Carboni says Elizabeth Nyumi’s Parwalla, which depicts her father’s country in the Great Sandy Desert, was also “particularly dear to me”.

“This painting has been installed in my office for most of my time at the gallery and I have developed a great attachment and fondness for it over the years,” he says. “It was sad to see it taken away in order to be displayed in the Desert River Sea exhibition, but I think it’s time for it to be enjoyed by everyone.”

Far greater challenges were faced by the exhibition’s co-curator Emilia Galatis to bring new works from the Kimberley to Perth. At least 30 languages are spoken among the 200 Aboriginal communities in the region, and English is often not the first language spoken. “All communities are different and we couldn’t just click our fingers to make things happen,” she says.

Galatis estimates she drove 1500 kilometres across the Kimberley last May collecting artworks from art centres. But the road to Kira Kiro Art Centre in Kalumburu was cut off when Galatis was collecting works so their large ochre drawings were delivered by the mail plane instead.

A self-described “FIFO art worker”, Galatis facilitated the making of artworks at the Kimberley’s far-flung art centres, which she says operate under different business models and face difficult logistical challenges. “Often the internet can be down for a week, the phone lines don’t work, there’s no hot water,” she says. “They were cut off by road at Kalumburu. Without me going there, they wouldn’t be able to participate in the exhibition because they wouldn’t have got the phone call.”

A lack of access to services provided by art centres was also a hurdle for Garry Sibosado, who lives in Lombadina, almost 200 kilometres north of Broome. “We also don’t have any mailing or shipping facilities, so we have to drive to Broome to get our pieces out to the world,” he says in the exhibition catalogue. “Photography, social media, internet woes all add to the pressure of being time poor with few resources.”

Galatis says she hopes collectors and galleries gain an understanding of the challenges faced by remote artists as well as the importance of the art industry to Kimberley communities. “We hope it busts some myths over the experiences of people who live in the Kimberley,” she says. “People think of gorges and great expanses of land that don’t have people in it.”

Desert River Sea: Portraits of the Kimberley is at the Art Gallery of WA from February 9 to May 27.